Chapter 5 - Promoting Night Clubs In Greece, What A Job

After a year back in Dublin working and dreaming of getting back to Greece, I finally saved up enough money to get my flight back and some spending money. The word had spread around our neighborhood about the crazy times a few of us had the year before so a few others guys and girls decided to join us. We arrived back on the Island of Ios in June 1995. This time, we flew directly to London and got a connecting flight from Heathrow Airport to Athens Greece. It was still a bit of a journey, but nothing like the year before and of course we had saved some cash going through London. 

On this second trip to Greece, I went with a complete lunatic from my neighborhood, Liam Scully. His nick name was "The Liamo." He was infamous around our area. He was nuts, a bit older than most of my friends and one of his arms was paralyzed from a drunken motor bike accident, but he could still roll a joint with one hand. I always had a great laugh with him and there was no better man for a session. I gotta respect him. He didn't give two shits what anyone thought about him. He'd argue with his own shadow. If you got on well with him, he was cool, but if you didn't, things got real awkward. He drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney. I remember meeting other guys who used to act all macho saying that they hadn't stopped drinking since they got to Greece. He used to say, "I haven't stopped drinking since the world cup," he'd pause for a second and then specify "1990" and he meant it. He'd start the day off with about 3-4 one liter bottles of Merry Down cider, a bottle of wine or two and then move on to a bottle of cheap Greek vodka, sometimes two. The Liamo could drink. He was also a pool shark and used to swindle people regularly. The more he drank, the better he got.

I used to have to break up arguments all the time with "The Liamo" and whomever he didn't get on with, which was quite a lot of people. 
I think I learnt a lot about people skills from my many encounters with people who had got in arguments with Liamo. One thing that really stuck with me was, never talk politics or religion when travelling. Something my friend never stopped talking about, I saw so many arguments start over that.

The word around Ios was that all the locals were all trying to rip you off, which I gotta admit was pretty true, but not everyone was out to rob you. So you had to be super careful doing any dealings with the locals and anyone else for that matter. 

I had heard about a really cool 5 bed house on the Island for rent. It was half way between the town and beach. It was perfect. It was a palace compared to most of the rooms that the locals were renting. Everyone kept saying the guy who owns it was dodgy and to stay away from him. I took a look at the house and thought we gotta have it. It was perfect for a group of Irish guys and some crazy English girls we had met on the party scene. So a friend of ours got us in contact with Yannis "the owner." I heard he was a bit of a drinker so I brought him a bottle of Metaxa, Greek Brandy. It turned out that he could speak perfect English and was super cool and had studied architecture in England and had spent some time in Ireland and really liked the Irish. He just had so many bad experiences in the past with others renting his house, that he was very hesitant to rent to anyone. I ended up spending half the day with him drinking the Metaxa and getting to know him. In the end, we got the lease on the house, which turned out amazing. One thing I learnt from that was always go into a business meeting with an open mind and look for the best in people, don't be so quick to judge anyone.

I ended up getting a promoter job with "The Liamo" for a club called "Disco 69." We used to get three thousand Greek Dramacka (no Euro's back then) a night and as much drink as we wanted. We'd work from approx 9pm till about 2am and then go to a rave called the Sound Factory and meet up with all the other workers there who had also just finished work. This place was bananas. It closed around 7am and then we'd regularly have parties back at our house. People used to dance on the roof, dance on the balcony, dance all over the house, it was mental! I l loved it. Some people used to stay up all night and then head straight to the beach from our house. We'd often find people asleep on our roof in the middle of the day, who had fallen asleep drunk with no sun block on and would wake up hungover with major sunburn. Our house was pretty well known around the Island.
Work at Disco 69 was perfect. It paid our rent, food and a small bit left over for whatever else we wanted. Our job was to stand at the door and hustle people into the club. Entrance was 500 drackma which entitled you to one free drink. We used to shut the curtains and have the DJ turn the music up full blast, some cheesy top 40 stuff. We'd tell guys that there was a few sexy drunk women inside. The owners used to employ a few crazy girls we knew to look sexy, get drunk and flirt with customers so by the time the first people had come in and drank half their super strong cheap cocktails we'd hustle a few more folks in. The place used to get packed out and we'd take turns leaving the door and having drinks in other clubs that were next to us.

Despite the perks, I left Disco 69 because I didn't like the owners. The owners of the club didn't like Israeli's coming in as they didn't drink anymore than one drink and they used to dance as if they were in a mosh pit, which would frighten most of the women and make them leave. So they told Liamo not to let any Israeli's in, which he gladly enforced. The word spread around the Island like wild fire, some folks laughed about it and some thought it was disgraceful. It got really awkward when Israelis would come up to the door and Liamo would refuse them. Mind you, after that, the place used to stay busy all night.

I left Disco 69 not long after that and got a job in a bar called "The West Club." It was a free for all. The owner was super cool but didn't have enough money to pay the staff in the beginning so he'd pay us with drink. There was about 6 girls and 6 guys working there. I met some really fun folks from all over the world working there. I had plans to leave there and go travelling to Turkey and Israel but I was broke and got word that I had failed my Diploma in Legal Studies and had to repeat it. I really didn't want to go home to repeat it, but I wanted to keep my mum happy as she really wanted me to get the Diploma. So I packed up at the end of the season and went back to Ireland.
Something that I learned on that trip was that I was a natural promoter and that I had "people skills" too. I also learned that where there is a will, there's a way and the path to that goal is part of the fun.

Chapter 4 - A Trip To Greece that Changed My Life Forever

After hearing all the crazy travel stories from the Aussie & Kiwi guys at Cafe en Seine and from my good friends older brother I had no choice but to rally the troops and book our first holiday to Greece, there were four of us.

Obviously we wanted to get there for as cheap as possible, so we booked a return flight off the teletext (an advertisement on the TV, no internet or Expedia back then) from Gatwick Airport in London to Athens Greece. We got an amazing price, the only challenge was, we had to make our own way to Gatwich Airport, which was just outside London. So we booked a Ferry from Dublin, Ireland to Hollyhead in Wales and got a train from Wales to London. Fuck - we must have been nuts, we got a 6am Ferry and within a half an hour of departure we were in Duty Free buying the cheapest bottles of whisky and Vodka we could find. 
After a brutal 4 hour ferry crossing from Ireland to Wales, and an 8 hour train ride from Wales to London, we arrived in Victoria Street Station London wasted on cheap whisky and Vodka. We had no idea how busy London was. It was nuts! People running in all angles. There were blacks, whites, Indians and Asian's... This was completely new for us. In Ireland in 1994, it was hard to find a Black, Asian or Indian guy. I remember one time walking down Grafton Street (one of the busiest Streets in Ireland) in Dublin with my mum and she pointing out a group of Indian guys to me. "Gerard quick, look over there." (To be honest, I think it was half novelty and she was half afraid.) 

By the time we arrived in Gatwick Airport, we were even more wasted. My good friend Jeff thought it was a good idea to mix our travel sickness tablets with the Whisky & Vodka from the Duty Free, and I agreed with him. (He was right, it worked).
We still had a 6 hour wait in Gatwick Airport, which we spent in the departure lounge drinking, then a 4 hour flight to Athens, Greece, and then finally a 7 hour ferry to the Island of Paros. After our insane journey to Paros, we arrived extremely hungover, hot & sweaty. It was the hottest weather all of us had ever experienced... about 90 degrees. We were greeted by about 100 locals all trying to get our business and stay in their rooms, after some weak negotiating we got a room in some old guys apartment, 4 of us in one small room. He had clearly seen that we were newbies and ripped us off. I guess it's all part of the journey, to be honest we were so tired and hungover we didn't care all we wanted was a bed and a shower. 

We spent the next two weeks partying it up with guys and girls from all over the world. We met some really interesting people, I sat spell bound listening to other travelers talk about their amazing adventures. I got to meet some cool guys who were selling t-shirts and jewelry on the beaches, it blew me away, these guys were travelling the world and funding it through selling merchandise on the beach, how amazing was that. Suddenly, a light bulb went off, I had a vision. That was my ticket to travel the world. 

After that 2 weeks in Greece, I came back to Ireland with a new perspective on life. I got my old job back in Cafe en Seine and had one goal in mind "to save as much money as possible so I could go back to Greece and spend the whole Summer there. One thing that I learned from this early experience, is that if you have a goal and you're hell bent on seeing it through, you can achieve it. It just takes a bit of creativity and a certain knowledge of where you want to go and a lot of action.

Cheers 
Gerry :)

Chapter 3 - My Early Years of Work and Still More School

So the road to building my own company and beginning to realize I needed to be my own boss, like many others, came to fruition while working for someone else. From these early experiences, I learned a bit of what I wanted to do, but more importantly, what I didn't want to do in my own business.

After leaving "Rathmines Tech" and now armed with my "Certificate in Business & Computer Studies," I got a commission-only sales job selling advertisement space for some under rated education magazine over the phone. We worked out of a small office on the second floor of some dingy building on Rathmines Road in Dublin and I was assigned to a small cubicle which felt like a prison cell.
The owner of the magazine would lock the main office door when we were onsite to protect us from all the unhappy customers. I only found this out when some guy came banging on the door looking for his money back and the boss wouldn't let him in. It was crazy. I looked out the spy hole and some big country lad was standing behind the door shouting in a thick country Irish accent "Ya Dirty Scamming Bitch gimme me money back .....". After about 20 minutes of shouting back and forth, he left the building and we went back to work.... Thank God for that. This was my first interaction with a very unsatisfied customer. (Note to self: Not what I want.)

The business model of her company was for us to cold call existing customers from the Yellow Pages and talk them back into buying more ad space in our publication. Then we'd repeat their own very same advertisement back to them, as if we had just made it up and attempt to resell it to them. This was pre internet days. I did my time & sold a few ad spaces, but not enough to keep me in drinking money and the boss was a pain in the arse and very dodgy, so I left.

Then my good friend Chris got me a job working with him in the kitchen of a pretty cool/fancy bar & restaurant in Dublin called 'Cafe en Seine'. It was a very successful, up & coming trendy bar in downtown Dublin. I recall speaking to one of the owners about how he got to own the place and he advised me of his favorite motto which was "Keep It Simple & Start Small." He told me he just did what he knew: "stick to the knitting...stick to what you know..."

This was the Summer of 1993. Dublin was entering the Celtic Tiger and kids had money. It's always about the timing! Cafe en Seine ended up being the trendiest bar in Dublin. At that time, it was the place to be and to be seen.

The staff were amazing and lots of fun. There were girls and guys from all over Ireland and lots of students and even some travelers from Australia & New Zealand. They were all in their early 20's, using the place as a stepping stone onto something else. At the time, none of us knew where the next steps where, but I loved it. It suited me perfect. I was washing dishes with my buddy, getting drunk and talking smack with guys & girls in the kitchen and bar. I got 4 pounds ($7) an hour, which was pretty amazing for a kitchen porter job back then. Plus, I got free food and drink of course.

At the same time, I enrolled as a mature student in an evening course in another college, the Dublin Institute of Technology: "DIT Aungier Street." I would graduate with a two year diploma in Legal Studies, another course to keep my mum happy. 

Something I learned from these early experiences were, although you might have a successful business financially in the short term, you want to do it by making customers happy. Your legacy will live on and people will remember. Also, doing what you enjoy is always best and it usually involves other happy people, always start small but have a big vision.

Until next time........

Gerry, Christine, G Pup

Sonas Denim

Chapter 2 - School's out - Thank God For That :)

After leaving school in 1992 and doing terrible in my leaving cert exams (similar to your A level's or high school final

exams) I talked my way into a local college called " The Rathmines Tech" this place was not your typical college or university. A lot of people were there to repeat their leaving cert exams or just there to do a one year course that didn't require a high grade level or they were there just to waste a year and figure out what they wanted to do with their lives.
Either way, no one really gave a F*$K. I enrolled into a computer and business studies class. To be honest I had actually no interest in ever going to college or taking a course but my mum always wanted me to get a certificate or diploma in something. She always said, "That's one thing that can never be taken away from you" Word of wisdom

from my mother, thanks Mum :)

I didn't think that I'd be accepted, because I had failed my leaving cert but somehow I talked my way in or the professors/teachers at the admission desk felt sorry for me, either way I got in :)
I have no idea how I did it, but I passed the one year course and came out with a Certificate in "Business and Computers Studies". Not bad considering I still had no idea how to work a computer or had any business skills whatsoever. 
Mind you, I did meet some great people there, and we ended up spending most of our time in a bar called "Streets" in Rathmines, drinking cider, smoking cigarettes, and talking shit with other students from other colleges nearby who were also skipping class.

Cheers Guys, till next time :)

Gerry Kelly :)

Chapter 1 - Where I Came From

I grew up in a suburb in Dublin called Templeogue.  Our family is your typical Irish family.  My mum's from the country and my dad's from Dublin.  I have two sisters who I get on with very well, and who have great families.  When we were growing up, my mum worked as a nurse and my dad worked two jobs: one as a taxi driver and one as a school teacher in a prison. My dad also studied law at the same time, and when he passed his exams, he became a full time lawyer.  He told me that he found it very sad that he would meet lots of young guys in the prison who wouldn't have been there if they had proper representation.  That inspired him to study law and become a lawyer. 

Some nights when we were very young and my mum was working the night shift in the hospital, my dad would drive my two sisters and I around in the passenger seat of his taxi while collecting fares.  To say the least, my dad's the hardest working man that I have ever met and the only person that I have ever met that never got sick. 

I must say that I think my parents had a huge role in shaping my personality to know I could do whatever I wanted.  They were living examples of being hard working, do it yourself, make-what-you-want type of people.  Without their example, I wouldn't have the underlying belief in myself that I have today.

To get back to my youth, I had a thing for jeans and  my mum would tell me that I always had great fashion sense.  When we went shopping together when I was a kid, I always picked my own clothing and was complimented by the sales assistants on my picks.  Growing up in the 80's in Dublin, Levis 501's were huge.  In fact they were so big that sometimes people would steal the jeans off your washing line, seriously.

 I had a great childhood and still have lots of amazing friends with whom I went to school and grew up with.  I must admit I never liked school,  I always seemed to get in trouble for day dreaming and having too much fun.  Crazy when you think about it.

My first job was a milk round when I was 14 with my friend Keith.  We collected the milk money every Thursday and Friday for years and also stole  Xmas trees and sold them outside our local church at Xmas time.  My teenage years were spent 1) drinking cheap vodka, cider and beer, 2) going to local disco's 30 terrorizing our neighborhood,  4) dreaming about travelling the world.

Irish Entrepreneur On A Mission To Build A Billion Dollar Denim Brand

My name's Gerry Kelly, I'm an Entrepreneur from Dublin, Ireland and the founder and CEO of Sonas San Francisco, a sexy, unique fashion forward denim company from San Francisco. For the past 3 years I've put my heart and soul into building the next great San Francisco denim company. I won't deny it, it's the toughest endeavor I have ever started, but I have made a vow to myself and many other amazing people who have helped me along this journey so far, that I'm going to take it all the way to completion, and I'm a man of my word

I've done a few tough things in the past such as finishing an Iron man Triathlon, running 150 miles across the Sahara desert in 120 degree's heat with all my clothing and food on my back, just to name a few, but holy @#!%, the fashion business is a different animal.

But hey, I love a Challenge and I've even made up my own quote "As long as I'm breathing, I'll never quit" Gerry Kelly 2011

I have no background in fashion whatsoever, I used to work in construction than I was a bar tender and then I jumped on the real estate bandwagon and lost my ass and now i'm in the fashion arena.

If you wanna read my story, stay tuned, I'll be posting a bubble a week, telling you all the do's and don't (which I have learnt through trial and error) and my personal journey from idea to opening a store and getting my jeans worn by some of the hottest celebrities in Hollywood. All grass roots my friends, no big marketing budget here, just yet.

Cheers & Sonas

I look forward to connecting with you all

Gerry